Towards Decolonizing African Journalism in the Post-news Era
Increasingly African scholars call for decolonization of the continent’s journalism. But how to do it is more complex than one would think.
By John Masuku
There is a strong feeling among scholars that journalistic practice should be based on historical realities and values embraced in different parts of the world rather than on colonial approaches historically regarded as superior and all encompassing. In Africa the call is getting louder with an increasing number of scholars advocating for the return to long abandoned traditional reporting techniques that were swept aside by so-called modern western approaches deemed to be more objective.
Sarah Chiumbu, associate professor of journalism at the University of Johannesburg said during her online presentation at an event last month in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, that the discussion on reshaping journalism in the African context is not new. Four themes can be identified in this decades-old debate, according to Chiumbu: Afriethics and professional journalism practice, Ubuntu communitarianism, decoloniality and journalism in Africa, and the role of digital technologies in rethinking journalism practice.
In explaining that at the heart of these debates is a refutation of the dominant Western-derived paradigms for conceptualizing journalistic norms,
values and practices, Chiumbu critically analyzed key studies demonstrating African scholars’ attempt to redefine foreign values using their own, locally grounded, methods. For example, Chiumbu said, Zambian media ethics scholar Francis Kasoma developed in the mid-1990s a framework for African ethics (Afriethics) that was believed it could transform the practice of journalism in Africa. Yet, the framework was critically received by some scholars. Keyan Tomaselli warned against exalting African values whereas Fackson Banda argued against Kasoma’s African cultural exceptionalism, emphasizing the lack of ground in normative theory to articulate Afriethics. Banda furthermore called for greater dialogue about the practicality of Afriethics in a globalizing African media context.
On arguments in favor of Communitarianism, Chiumbu, a former national director of the Zimbabwean journalism NGO Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), emphasized the relationship between an individual and the community to understand the concept of Ubuntu, which pushes for African consciousness as a way of being, and for a code of ethics and behavior deeply embedded in African culture. Yet, echoing academics such as Pieter J. Fourie, Colin Chasi and Ylva Rodny-Gumede, Chiumbu’s concern is that Ubuntuism as a journalism framework does not place a high value on objectivity, neutrality and detachment: a journalist is seen as an involved community member who is not able to remain a spectator. Critics of this approach, observed Chiumbu, have pointed out Ubuntu’s limitations when it comes to practical implementation in a world where global connectedness, diversity and heterogeneity are a reality. Ubuntuism’s impact on journalistic freedoms was discussed by Levi Obonyo who is more concerned that the debate about the continent’s journalism has evolved without incorporating Africa’s realities. Furthermore, Fourie wrote that Ubuntuism should rather be seen as an intellectual quest to rediscover and re-establish idealized values of traditional African culture(s) and traditional African communities than a framework for an African normative media theory.
Building on the Ubuntu-focused debates, some scholars go beyond ‘de-Westernising’ journalism pedagogy and practice to disrupt the very notion of being a journalist. Chiumbu cited Winston Mano who proffered that at the heart of decoloniality is the geopolitics of knowledge and the need for decolonising Eurocentric knowledge.
Turning to the role of digital technologies in rethinking journalism, Chiumbu said: “The history of journalism is, in many ways, defined by technological change. But the Internet has been the biggest disrupter in the field transforming how news is produced, distributed, and used. Different forms of journalism have emerged: interactive journalism, citizen journalism, data journalism, algorithm journalism, automated journalism and so on.”
Oral cultures have begun to emerge in newsmaking in the African context after hundreds of years of use of various orality methods in passing information and shaping discourses of the day. Chiumbu gives the example of hard political news, which is often gleaned not from official news media but from conversations with friends and acquaintances in taxis, saloons, taverns, or churches. Ibrahim Seaga Shaw argued that an African form of journalism based on orality has always existed and is now being boosted on newly emerged digital platforms. Social media, for example, are creating new forms of digital radio that exist side by side with and feed into forms of oral communication. Other good orality models include the West African griot, a storyteller, singer, musician, oral historian, and social commentator whose role is described by Terge Skederjal, and Uganda’s Community Audio Towers, commonly known as Bizindalo, which are used by rural and semi-urban communities to share local information.
To realize a complete transformation of African journalism to its roots, Chiumbu proposes a decolonisation of journalism curricula to produce civic-minded journalists, stressing the need to make those curricula inclusive of epistemologies born in the Global South. “While the debate on digital technologies and rethinking journalism is a global one, this new “technological turn” has provided African media scholars with the opportunity to reimagine and theorize how journalism can be taught and practiced in ways that speak to the lived realities of citizens on the continent,” Chiumbu said.
John Masuku is a Zimbabwe-based broadcast journalist, media consultant & trainer. He is a fellow of the Media and Journalism Research center. John can be contacted on jjwpmasuku55@gmail.com or via Twitter at @john_masuku.
